"Stuff is eaten by dogs, broken by family and friends, sanded down by the wind, frozen by the mountains, lost by the prairie, burnt off by the sun, washed away by the rain. So you are left with dogs, family, friends, sun, rain, wind, prairie and mountains. What more do you want?"
Federico Calboli

Saturday, October 22, 2011

A very strange word list

This may only interest writers and other word- mad wretches..

But I recently unearthed a 1940 postcard of the Tokyo Olympiad (?) written on but never sent by Virginia Huntington, Betsy's mother and the bishop's wife.We NEVER made any sense of it- creative interpretations encouraged. (She was also a rather awful, but published, poet, if that helps).

It says, vertically like this, only:

Inoculate

Embarrass

Harass

Supersede

Innuendo

Purify

Vilify

Plaguing

Dessicate

Picnicking

The last is emphasized because it is just a bit out of place...?

First time I met her she held my face close to her thick glasses and asked "How many brothers and sisters do you have?" When I replied "eight, all younger", she grinned wickedly and said, "Ahhh-- Roman Catholic I see...'

I have many more tales. I should add that while she was a "bells and smells" Anglican in the end, she was born a Mennonite, joined the Church of England, became a nun, went to China, and married her bishop...

My theory on some of the words on the word list are hard to rhyme words. This obviously doesn't cover them all, but given the poet status and that some of the words appear to be pseudo-rhyming pairs, that'd be my first guess.